The Structure And Development Of Picture-book Reading Ability For 3-to-6-year-old Children

The importance of reading has been widely recognized,and countries are actively working to improve the reading ability of their citizens.Early reading plays a foundational and predictive role in children’s future reading ability.Early reading begins with picture-book reading,in which children gradually improve their reading ability.It is of positive significance to explore the structure and development of children’s picturebook reading ability.This not only helps to understand the essential process of children’s picture-book reading,promotes theoretical research on picture-book reading,but also provides support for cultivating and improving children’s picture-book reading ability in educational practice,and lays the foundation for their future growth into successful readers.This dissertation explored the structure and development of children’s picture-book reading ability,consisting of 3 parts and 6 studies.The first part(Study 1)explored the structure of children’s picture-book reading ability.This research theoretically analyzed and defined the connotation and structure of children’s picture-book reading ability,and then recruited 16 experts on picture-book reading and 12 kindergarten teachers from the kindergartens characterized by their picture-book reading teaching as the interviewees,a qualitative analysis was conducted to construct the structure of children’s picture-book reading abilities.A cross-sectional survey was conducted to verificate the structure of children’s picture-book reading ability constructed previously by recruiting 134 kindergarten teachers and 274 parents of the upper classes children from the kindergartens specializing in picture-book reading.The second part included three studies(Study 2,Study 3,and Study 4).To explore the development of picture-book reading abilities for3-to-6-year-old children,90 children were recruited,in which 30 children were from lower,middle and upper classes respectively.With the research materials of picture-books of three levels of difficulty,Study 2 conducted the eye movement experiment to explore the development of children’s visual perception ability in picture-books.Study 3investigated the development of picture memory ability,the children were subjected to the picture memory tests;the three picture-books which were the homogeneity as study 2were selected,Study 4 adopted story narrative and semi-structured interview to explore the development of picture-book comprehension ability.The third part was the establishment and application of children’s picture-book reading ability development index,which included two studies(Study 5,Study 6).Study 5 used the number of children’s perception and recognition of picture-book information,the number of recalled and recognized picture information,and the children’s self-reported stories and reasoning questions’ answers as indicators to establish the development indexes of children’s picture-book perception ability,picture memory ability,comprehension ability respectively,and the development index of children’s reading ability of picture-book was established by giving different weights to the three core abilities development indexes.On this basis,the identification standard of children’s picture-book reading ability index level was established.Study 6 adopted the latent profile analysis to analyze the heterogeneity of children’s picture-book reading ability based on the development indexes of the three core abilities of children’s picture-book reading ability.The results were as follows:1.Children’s picture-book reading ability refers to the abilities of children to extract and construct meaning from pictures,words and the relationship between pictures and texts in the process of reading picture-books.Visual perception ability,memory ability and comprehension ability are its core abilities.2.Children’s picture-book reading ability and its core abilities increased with the growth of age.The upper class may be a period of rapid development of children’s perception and attention to words,the middle class may be a period of rapid development of children’s picture recall and recognition ability,and it may also be a period of rapid development of children’s picture-book comprehension ability.3.The development of the core abilities of children’s picture-book reading ability was uneven.Visual perception ability developed from a high starting point and developed slowly,while comprehension ability developed from a low starting point and developed quickly.Picture memory ability developed quickly before middle class,and then entered a plateau;4.When children read picture-books,they first read pictures,and read pictures mainly.With the increase of age,children paid less attention to the pictures,while paid more attention to the words.The result showed a trend of developing of children’s picture-books reading: from pictures to words.In the picture area,young children gave the highest degree of attention to key information,followed by sub-key information,and finally general information.The perceptual attention of the children from the lower class to the words had nothing to do with literacy.There was a significant positive correlation between the perceived attention to the words and the literacy level of middle and upper classes children.Middle class may be an important developmental period for young children to read more characters due to literacy.5.Children’s picture recall mainly focused on key information,and there was a significant difference between it and non-key information.The recognition ability of young children on critical information was significantly higher than those on non-critical information.6.In terms of story structure understanding of children’s picture books,the level of understanding of background elements was high,and the ability to understand internal states was significantly lower than that of story structures such as events and endings.The level and correctness of children’s picture book comprehension would continue to improve with age.The understanding of young children was mostly between knowing individual objects and understanding individual behaviors or states.Children in middle and large classes gradually understood the relationship or connection between behaviors or events,but they understood more about the local relationship of the story,and less able to understand from the whole.Children’s picture-book story comprehension and reasoning ability improved with age,and children’s reasoning ability on explicit questions was significantly higher than that on implicit questions.7.Children’s picture-book reading ability showed different levels and characteristics in picture-books of different difficulties.The children’s perceived attention in the pictures had an inverted U-shaped relationship with the difficulty of the picture book,while in the words,there was a U-shaped relationship.With the increase in the difficulty of picturebook,the way of children’s memory had gradually transitioned from focusing on "specific events" to focusing on "individual objects".There were significant differences in children’s comprehension and reasoning ability in picture-books with different difficulty levels.The more difficult the picture book,the lower the level and correctness of children’s understanding.8.The identification standard of children’s picture-book reading ability index level was established.The identification standard was divided into five grades(Excellent,Upper,Normal,Lower,Sluggish)according to three age groups of lower,middle and upper classes.9.There were three different types of the picture-book reading ability of children:perception type,perception and memory type and comprehension type.Ages difference manifested a shift in the categories of children’s picture book reading ability.The picture-book reading ability of lower class children belonged to mainly perception and memory type,that of middle class children belonged to the perception and memory type or the understanding type,and that of upper class was mainly the understanding type.In sum,this dissertation shows that children’s picture-book reading ability consists of three core abilities: visual perception ability,memory ability and comprehension ability.Picture is the core of children’s picture-book reading,and children’s picture-book reading ability is mainly reflected in the perception,memory and understanding of pictures.The reading ability of children’s picture-books continues to improve with age,and the development of their core abilities is uneven.The results help to understand the nature of children’s picture-book reading,and provide strong support for the targeted cultivation and improvement of children’s picture-book reading ability.